I will not be
so adventurous as to say how far the beautiful military music of the
Austrians tended to lighten the burden of a German garrison in an
Italian city; but certainly whoever has heard that music must have
felt, for one base and shameful moment, that the noise of so much of
a free press as opposed his own opinions might be advantageously
exchanged for it. The poem of "St. Ambrose", written in 1846, when the
Germans seemed so firmly fixed in Milan, is impersonally addressed
to some Italian, holding office under the Austrian government, and,
therefore, in the German interest.
ST. AMBROSE.
Your Excellency is not pleased with me
Because of certain jests I made of late,
And, for my putting rogues in pillory,
Accuse me of being anti-German. Wait,
And hear a thing that happened recently:
When wandering here and there one day as fate
Led me, by some odd accident I ran
On the old church St. Ambrose, at Milan.
My comrade of the moment was, by chance,
The young son of one Sandro[1]--one of those
Troublesome heads--an author of romance--
_Promessi Sposi_--your Excellency knows
The book, perhaps?--has given it a glance?
Ah, no? I see! God give your brain repose;
With graver interests occupied, your head
To all such stuff as literature is dead.
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